Parasomnia - Halloween Vault Entry 2023

PARASOMNIA

  Screams filled the house. Bloodcurdling. Bone chilling.

Darcie had stressed one simple rule; never break the circle! Loren didn't mean it, she felt something touch her back. It was the fear that made her break away. But now that she had, the group had much worse things to contend themselves with than something brushing against her back.

The room filled with sticky, hot air, the scent of something putrid clinging to every breath they took.

The figure couldn't have been any bigger than a child, probably four feet tall. It was maybe hunched over, its frame tilted slightly to one side as it watched the five. But it was watching them with ruby flamed eyes, fixed on their movements and waiting for one of them to notice it.

Darcie was the unlucky one.

When she made eye contact with it, her mind's eye was flooded with terrible, horrible images that forced a horrified scream out of her, setting off a chain reaction from the others. Their screams grew and grew until Loren made a break to leave the room. Kina was right behind her, the two pulling on the door that they'd propped open.

It flung open and the two girls spilled out, right behind them was Ash, and then Luke.

Darcie tried to follow, but before she could get to her feet, the thing in the shadows had a grip on her. It wouldn't let her go. She screamed for help, but Luke couldn't get back into the room, the door had swung shut in his face and was stuck.

Towering over her, growing at least twice in height, the thing stared into Darcie's soul and whispered six words.

You should have followed her rules.

Regret and terror filled Darcie's chest as she screamed and screamed, fighting with all of her might to get free of its grip. She fell back onto the wooden floor, the thing hovering above her like a shoddy Halloween decoration. Shoddy as it may have looked, its presence instilled nothing but fear in Darcie. All of the air in her lungs came rushing out as a weight settled on her chest. It was crushing her.

Closing her eyes, in a bid to make the last thing she saw before death anything but its maw, she felt something sharp scratch her neck before two hands pulled her by the shoulders out of the room.

All at once, the air was icy, smelled of rotting wood and dust, and the weight from her chest was gone.

"Come on!" Luke yelled, getting Darcie to her feet and pulling her by the hand to the stairs. Kina's choice of room for the seance had to be on the second floor of the house, up a flight of stairs that were close to crumbling underneath the weight of the teenagers, fleeing for their lives.

The faces of unknown souls flickered in Darcie's peripheral, unable to make any of them out clearly, the sounds of their pleas meshing together.

One voice called above the rest, clearer than if it was right next to her.

You should have followed her rules!

          Darcie had no idea which way her friends had scattered, or if they'd even made it out of the house in one piece. She was more focused on her boyfriend running ahead of her, his hand holding hers so tightly, it felt like he was going to crush her fingers. But he was not going to stop, not until he knew they were at a safe distance away from that house.

Ashcroft House.

It was one of the most haunted locations in town. Every year, a group of idiotic teenagers, like Darcie and her friends, would go up there and try to stay until it struck midnight on Halloween. It was a rite of passage, a test of courage, and if you could make it until then, you gained some kind of popularity. Kina, one of Darcie's friends, was obsessed with the house and the stories about it, so much so that she'd roped three of her friends in, Darcie included, and had this ridiculous idea to perform a seance.